September 19th. What? You don't know about "Talk Like A Pirate" Day? Get yer bloated, barnacle ridden carcass over to:

Talk Like A Pirate

In particular worm yer way o'er to "Ask Capt Slappy". Tell 'im Greybeard The Flatulent sent ye.

The Teeth Of The Tiger

I finished Clancy's latest last night in a 2 day, 400-page blitz of reading. Before that I plowed through Maugham's Of Human Bondage which I liked though I wanted to throttle the main character a few times. At least, he got the young babe in the end (no pun intended, I think) - I had uncertainty about his heterosexuality but then again it's Maugham.

Back to Clancy. His last book Red Rabbit was boring, plodding, and for me unfinishable. This new book showed a return to his "normal" style - action but with lots of techie stuff. He could've added more in details on how people are tracked through their computers but that's my personal whim.

The book ends abruptly. The last 20 pages or so seem like a rush, like Clancy was trying to meet some sort of publishing deadline.

Clancy has written longer books. What I fear is that instead of writing a complete solid story in 600 pages, Clancy is chopping this plot into two books of 400 pages each. Instead of buying a single $39 book, we're facing the purchase of 2 $29 books. Nice profit there. Then the next plot can be split up between 3 books.

I hope this isn't the beginning of a trend.

In the meantime I'll just lose myself in Dan Brown's latest The Da Vinci Code with a Robert Ludlum waiting in the batters circle. Don't worry. It's just a phase I go through - thrillers this month. Classics the next.

Digital Rights Management

You thought Microsoft was a slimy, monopolistic, law-breaking company. You ain't seen nothing yet. Buy your stock now.

File sharing, as you know, can be a good thing or a bad thing with the argument boiling down to privacy / piracy versus profit. The RIAA and music companies are crying over lost profits due to mp3 sharing. Movie companies grind their teeth when copies of their films get swapped within hours of a premiere. And the swappers say their privacy is being invaded by these companies and, oh, music and movies cost too much.

But - problem solved - it's Microsoft to the rescue with their new Digital Rights Management. Now each user can specify who can read a file. Piracy problem solved! Profit problem solved! Privacy maintained!

Except...(you could see this coming, right?)

Let's say I create a file in Office 2005 with DRM. No other (non-Microsoft) program will be able to read this. Wow, such security! That means if you want to share a file with a Linux OpenOffice user you'll either have to convert the file to a simpler non-DRM format or they'll have to convert to Microsoft. Such convenience! Such a good use of business time.

Microsoft could release versions of their apps for Linux but that'd be admitting that Linux is a real OS. No, much better to force everyone to abide by Microsoft's "standards". Force businesses to "upgrade" from Linux to Microsoft.

Or this scenario: you have a business with 5000 computers, all running Office 2002. Some of them upgrade to Office DRM. The folks running 2002 can't read the DRM files. "Gosh!" says Microsoft, "You have to upgrade your 2002 users to DRM and have we got a licensing deal for you..."

DRM will be yet another way for Microsoft to inflict costly upgrades on people and companies, not a one-time upgrade but continual. Microsoft is a rich company. They want to stay rich. They need continual sources of income. What better way than to release new versions of their products that will be neither forward nor backwards compatible.

Mind you, I'm not cheesed over Microsoft being a monopoly. Not at all. The pinnacle of success for a business is to be a monopoly. I deplore Microsoft's method of becoming a monopoly and my disgust with them started way back in the DOS days. Yes, that's how long Microsoft has been manipulating things.

I remember when Microsoft and DR-DOS both came out with upgrades. The computer magazines consistently rated DR-DOS better, with nicer utilities. With Microsoft everything was half-baked. The new memory manager worked fair. It left an opening filled by Quarterdeck's memory manager. Anyway. Consensus was that DR-DOS was better than MS-DOS.

Yet DR-DOS failed and MS-DOS sold gazillions. Why? Because Microsoft had a scam where every PC would come preloaded with MS-DOS - even if you didn't want that OS, Microsoft still got a cut.

Money wasn't cheap back then. You spend $1,200 on a new PC, you'd think twice about spending another $40 for DR-DOS when MS-DOS worked OK. And, of course, Microsoft programs written for MS-DOS may not run under DR-DOS. And vice versa. Excel might run fine in MS-DOS but Lotus might have problems.

And hence the birth of a monopoly. You control the OS, you control the software that can run under it.

Tell me if this sounds familiar? Microsoft would release an app - it'd be garbage. But, after borrowing ideas from competitors and a bit of creative marketing, by version 3 Microsoft would own the niche.

Or to knock out a competitor they release either a free clone, buy the company, or incorporate the clone into the OS and claim it's necessary. Bye-bye Netscape. Toodles Quicktime and RealPlayer. Tschuss Fox Software. Adios AOL Messenger. Sayonara Autocad. (Whoops, Autocad still owns their market...for now.)

Time to stop before I *really* start frothing. With DRM on its way to your desktop, now's a good time to buy Microsoft (MSFT). Be a part of the monopoly.

(But you may want to use Linux and OpenOffice to get your real work done.)